Virginia Woolf Editions

Mrs Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself. 

Do you recognise this first sentence of Mrs Dalloway, Virginia Woolf's classic novel? The book was first published on 14 May 1925 by Hogarth Press, which she and her husband Leonard Woolf set up. Her sister, artist Vanessa Bell, designed the dust jacket. My next blog post was supposed to be a reading journal entry but I couldn't get these six old paperback editions out of my head after spotting them on Instagram yesterday - Mrs Dalloway Day. Here we have the covers of Mrs Dalloway, Three Guineas, and Orlando, which I have added to my wish list. If only they were hardcovers.

Mrs Dalloway; Three Guineas; Orlando
By Virginia Woolf
Paperback, 224; 192; 352 pages
Mariner Books

Letters to Felice · Franz Kafka

The Schocken Kafka Library is a collection of thirteen books by Franz Kafka (b. 1883) containing his fiction, letters, and diaries. The collection consists of sizeable paperbacks, tastefully designed where the title font has been adapted from Kafka's legible handwriting. Currently, I only have one of them, the letters he wrote to friends, family, and editors, but have added many to my wish list. Letters to Felice (2016) contains over 500 letters he wrote to his girlfriend Felice, whom he got engaged to twice but never married. They met in August 1912 at the home of Kafka's best friend Max Brod and their relationship was mainly an epistolary one, given that he lived in Prague; she in Berlin. We can thank Brod for access to Kafka's writings today. Kafka asked him to burn all unpublished material after his death, but Brod refused. Kafka died of tuberculosis on 3 June 1924, a month before turning 41. Kafka is buried at the New Jewish Cemetery in Prague.

Cover design: Peter Mendelsund

Letters to Felice
By Franz Kafka
Edited by Erich Heller and Jürgen Born
Translated by James Stern and Elisabeth Duckworth
Paperback, 624 pages
ISBN 9780805208511
Schocken Books